In current spectrum management, some spectrums are granted to a specific mobile operator or a specific mobile technology (such as Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS for short) or Long Term Evolution (LTE for short)), and the spectrums are referred to as licensed spectrums (licensed spectrum). Some spectrums are also allocated to unlicensed user equipment (UE for short) for use, and different wireless devices can share frequency resources on the spectrums. The spectrums are referred to as unlicensed spectrums.
The unlicensed spectrums refer to spectrums that can be used by any organization or personal device. However, when the unlicensed spectrums are being used, a specific rule needs to be followed, that is, monitoring is performed before sending. A signal can be sent on an unlicensed spectrum provided that an idle spectrum is detected by any device. If an LTE network is deployed on the unlicensed spectrum, a carrier corresponding to the unlicensed spectrum of the UE may be dynamic. That is, the UE cannot continuously occupy a resource of the unlicensed spectrum.
When a secondary carrier of UE uses an unlicensed spectrum, because the secondary carrier needs to acquire a resource of the unlicensed spectrum based on contention, the UE needs to always monitor the unlicensed spectrum, which leads to extremely large power consumption of the UE. Therefore, how to reduce power consumption of the UE when the secondary carrier of the UE uses an unlicensed frequency becomes a technical problem that needs to be resolved currently.